I had to go to Devon for a family occasion on July 20th and decided to stay an extra week in the hope of getting out for a sail. Initially I stayed at an excellent vegetarian and vegan guest house called Fern Tor near South Molton but then headed down to Exeter to stay on Mike’s boat, Gadwall, moored in the canal basin. The only other person available to sail was Al but he couldn’t make it down to Exmouth till the Saturday so on Friday I occupied myself and earned a bit of money by helping scrape paint off a steel-hulled yacht which was propped up on the dockside next to Gadwall. On Saturday I took the train to Exmouth and met Al in a cafe at the marina. We only had a narrow window of opportunity to get Mary off her shallow mooring so we needed to be ready to cast off at noon. That still gave us time to sit and have a coffee and although Polly couldn’t go sailing with us she popped in to the cafe to say hello and bring some foam pipe insulation which was to be used to cover some uncomfortable hard edges in Mary’s forward berth.
After coffee we went down to Shelly Beach and rowed out to the mooring. Mary appeared to be in good condition and after the usual preparations we cast off (leaving the dingy tied up there) and motored out to deeper water. The weather was fine with a favourable breeze so we got the sails up as soon as we were clear of any obvious danger and set off down the coast, aiming to reach Brixham. At times the wind freshened to the point where we considered reefing the main but then it would drop again so we stuck with the full sail even though we were sometimes slightly over-powered and had to head closer to the wind than we would otherwise have needed to. At other times we could have done with a bit more wind but we made it to Brixham in reasonable time, moored up to a pontoon, and went ashore for a pub meal. I walked up to Berry Head to watch the sun going down before heading back to sleep on the boat.
Relaxing before setting sail from Brixham
On Sunday we still had good weather and enough wind to head off further down the coast. We could have gone to Dartmouth but Al needed to be back in Exmouth on Monday so we decided to just go as far as the Mewstone and then head back up to Torquay. The wind was favourable for getting out of Brixham and round Berry Head but then we had to tack to reach the Mewstone – it was slow going but we persevered and got there in the end. It was initially much easier heading back up the coast and we made good progress until reaching Berry Head but by then the wind had shifted to the North-West, making it pretty much impossible to get to Torquay under sail (Mary is great in some ways but she can’t sail close to the wind). We could have sailed back into Brixham but I wanted to see Torquay and since the wind was forecast to be from the North again on Monday we were probably going to have to motor at some point anyway so we decided to start the outboard. We crossed the bay in an hour or so and I took us in to the harbour, rafting up next to a speedboat on the cheap visitors pontoon. We went ashore for a pub meal again and then retired to the boat to sleep. A big group of Spanish kids were hanging out on some steps near the marina and singing loudly but I must have been pretty tired because I was asleep before I knew it.
When we woke up on Monday morning there was a very slight breeze but by the time we finished breakfast it had dropped to nothing. Incidentally both me and Al thought the coffee tasted strange and we traced it to the water bottle that I had filled up in the Marina at Brixham, I don’t know what it was contaminated with but we dumped it and filled up again before setting off. Unfortunately we had to motor again but we had plenty of time and did not have tide against us so I only used about two thirds throttle to save fuel. We needed to be back in Exmouth by 2pm to catch the high tide and we were off Dawlish by 11am. With time to kill I suggested cutting the engine and drifting for a while to go for a swim. Al dived in first and got back aboard easily but when it was my turn the wind had picked up slightly and I had trouble reaching the boat. In retrospect we should have used the opportunity for man overboard practice but I swam as fast as I could and just managed to grab onto the outboard. After that the wind continued to increase and we had a nice sail into the estuary.
Once we were moored up we had to take an outboard ashore (one that we had borrowed and that had been taking up space on the boat during our sail). We managed that without capsizing the dingy and loaded it into Al’s van to take back up to its owner who also lives on a boat in Exeter. Overall it was an enjoyable if rather uneventful sail. While onboard Al did some sail repairs but they could really do with being replaced (the leech of the mainsail in particular was fluttering the whole time). I don’t know if it is worth buying new sails but we should definitely look out for suitable second hand ones.
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